Mike Mann gets $90k for the domain DollarCity.com following a UDRP

Mike Mann announced that he sold the domain name DollarCity.com for $90,000. But there is more to the story.

He actually sold the domain name to the company that filed a UDRP complaint for this domain 2 years ago.

Needless to say the company lost. And they lost badly having the sole panelist found them attempting a reverse domain name hijacking.

The disputed domain name was originally registered and subsequently acquired by the Respondent several years prior to the Complainant’s first use of the DOLLARCITY trademark and can not therefore have been registered for the purposes of paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy with the Complainant’s trademark in mind. Furthermore, the Complainant has provided no evidence that the Respondent has used the disputed domain name in any manner that has targeted or sought to take unfair advantage of the Complainant’s trademark. Accordingly, the Panel is of the view that this Complaint had no reasonable prospect of success and that the Complainant, who is represented by specialist attorneys who appear to have specific expertise in this area, knew or ought to have known that this was the case. The Panel therefore concludes that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.

For the foregoing reasons the Complaint is denied. The Panel finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.

Mike Mann said that “these people tried to come at me with lawyers and ended up paying quadruple plus the legal fees“.

Mike probably had the domain name priced at about $20,000 before the UDRP in 2016. 2 years and a failed UDRP later and the price went up to $90,000.

So the company tried to steal the domain name using a doomed UDRP complaint and ended up paying close to $100k (if you add up the UDRP and attorney cost) instead of $20k.

Let this be a lesson to any company that thinks of doing something similar.

About Konstantinos Zournas

Konstantinos studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London and lives in Athens, Greece. He loves domains and building websites. He is online since 1995, learned about html in 1996 and got into domains in 2002. He started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

3 comments

Way to go Mike, but our industry should demand much stronger leaseholder rights.
We would like to know, what the dept. of commerce and Verisign are doing to uphold Current Leaseholders rights? ALL (.COM Equimoditty Platform Asset Holders ) Need protections NOW . We as an industry are falling down by not exerting more pressure on ICANN + Dept. of Commerce +Verisign , to uphold leaseholder rights. Industry leaders need to get serious. JAS

Love the story, thanks for sharing. Gz Mike.
” The Panel therefore concludes that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding. ”
This case will be used as a precedent for domain holders who cannot be extorted for their domains by corporate bullies.